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Student Handout 5.1 Beginnings in Britain: What Were the Main Characteristics? It was the cotton industry in Britain that led the way towards the revolutionary changes in the technology and organization of industrial production from which ripples of change spread far beyond industry. The use of machines in British cotton production began as early as the 1730’s, though it was not until fifty years later that the machines in the cotton industry became steam-powered. By the early nineteenth century, most spinning was done by machines and in factories. This production method was expensive, but profitable. Robert Owens, a shop assistant, started his first cotton factory in 1789 with a borrowed 100 pounds, which at the time equaled half a year’s income or more for 95 percent of Britain’s population. Twenty years later, he bought out his partners in another of his factories for 84,000 pounds. During these years, mechanization produced major changes. The use of steam-driven machines, which could do in three hours the work it took a hand spinner to do fifty hours, had become widespread. Invention of the cotton gin in 1792 increased the amount of cotton a slave could clean in a day from one to fifty pounds, thereby increasing the profits on cotton. Steam power fueled the demand for more slaves to work in the American South’s plantation economy, and it benefited the British cotton industry by increasing the availability and reducing the price of its raw material. Because weaving took longer to become mechanized, handloom weavers enjoyed for a while more work and higher wages. There was about a quarter of a million weavers in Britain in 1800. Around 1815, power-weaving using steam-driven machinery became common. By the 1830s, handloom weavers’ wages had dropped by 60 percent. The cost of a piece of cotton cloth fell from forty shillings to five shillings, and cotton textiles made up 22 percent of Britain’s entire industrial production. Foreign sales became essential: four pieces of cotton cloth were exported for every three sold at home. Cotton goods rose from 2 percent of British exports in 1774 to over 60 percent by 1820. Demand for cotton cloth in Britain was high, based on early acquaintance with imports from India. In the 1730s, the government filled the demand with expanded home production by banning the import of cotton textiles from India and then charging an import tax of up to 71 percent of its value on imported Indian cotton cloth. The tax on cotton goods Britain exported to India was negligible or non-existent. What had been one of the world’s leading cotton industries in India was virtually ruined by the mid-nineteenth century. In 1816, India exported 1.5 million pounds worth of cotton goods. By 1850, instead of exporting, it imported 4 million pounds worth of cotton goods from Britain. The Indian cotton industry partially recovered in the late nineteenth century after the British government abandoned protectionist policies, and by 1914 India was the world’s fourth largest cotton manufacturer. The following gives some idea of the changes in the country that was the first to experience industrialization: Student Handout 5.1 1750. Britain’s population was some seven million. An estimated 80 percent of them lived in settlements of under 5,000 inhabitants. Sixty to seventy percent of the population worked in agriculture, forestry, and fishing. The country was exporting surplus grain, and all the raw materials needed by its industries were supplied from within the country. Britain accounted for less than 2 percent of global production. 1800. The population was some 9 million, of which about three-quarters lived in the countryside rather than towns or cities. About 25 percent of the population worked in agricultural occupations, and, except in years of exceptionally poor harvests, enough food was produced at home to feed all the country’s people. The bulk of British exports had shifted from the traditional wool to cotton. Halfway between 1800 and 1850, wages for unskilled labor in industry were 65 percent higher than for unskilled labor in agriculture. And the population of industrial towns increased by as much as 40 percent during only one decade. The normal workday in wellregulated textile factories with high employment of women and children was twelve to thirteen hours a day. 1850. The population had doubled in a century, with about half living in cities. About a third of the labor force worked in partly or wholly machine- and steam-driven industries (textiles, mining, metals, machinery, railways, shipping), though some hand- and water-powered textile machinery was still in use. Also, more people still worked in agriculture than in any other occupation. A ten-hour maximum workday was legislated for women in factories. But seventy hour-plus workweeks continued in unregulated sweatshops when business was good, and workers were let go in most occupations when business was bad. Textile factories were not alone in demanding long hours. Engineers and iron-founders, for instance, worked sixty-three hour weeks year round. The national standard of living had doubled overall during the century. But significant segments of the population were much worse off, higher incomes came at the cost of longer and harder work, and the insecurity of lay-offs stalked working people even when employed. 1900. About 75 percent of the population lived in cities. Only 9 percent worked in agriculture, forestry, and fishing. Britain had to import almost half its food supply, and all or part of every raw material needed by its industries except coal. Only about a third of the labor force worked in occupations that were not fossil fuel-based. The largest numbers were employed in domestic service (virtually all women), in administration, government, and the professions (exclusively men). Britain, with 3 percent of the world’s population, both produced and consumed about 25 percent of the entire fuel energy output of the world. It was the world’s largest trader, and it accounted for over 25 percent of global production. Sources: David Christian, Maps of Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 405, 409; Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979), 14, 90-1, 206, 222; Donald Hughes, An Environmental History of the World (New York: Routledge, 2001) 123; Jack A Goldstone, “Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History” (Journal of World History, 13, no. 2, 2002), 364; Angus Maddison, The World Economy (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2001), 96, 116; Peter Mathias, The First Industrial Nation (London, Methuen, 1983), 239, 241-2; Joel Mokyr, ed., The Economics of the Industrial Revolution (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985), 59, 196; Gorham D. Sanderson, India and the British Imperialism (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), 146; Peter Stearns, The Industrial Revolution in World History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), Chapter 1, passim. Source: World History For Us All – http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/